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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

Ok, naive question, what would make one registrar better or worse than another. They all do the same thing, no?

Quality of user experience: Can I register a domain without being bombarded for ads for other add-on crap?

Social responsibility: Am I supporting a company that relies on horrible and sexist and demeaning ads to get attention?

Social cachet: Would I be embarrassed to have people find out who I was using for my domains/hosting? It may be shallow, but working with GoDaddy looks as sophisticated as having an @aol.com email address.

Features like: Locking. Ease of transfers in and out. Properly authorizing requests for changes. Customer record privacy. Providing their own zone hosting. Not injecting evil wildcards/redirects. Supporting more than the basic record types when hosting the zones.

I'm sure there are other things that could be added.

GoDaddy supported SOPA, their advertising campaigns are notoriously sexist, their CEO once posted a "white man's burden" video of him "saving some poor Africans" by killing an elephant, and they're constantly in the news for sleazy anti-consumer business tactics that add up to an awful, socially irresponsible corporation.

They've since recanted their SOPA support, but I think it'll take more than a calculated business move to regain any consumer trust. Personally, I'd advise being familiar with the organizations that have ever supported SOPA, and cutting ties with them for any future endeavors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_offi...

Here are some previous mentions of GoDaddy/SOPA on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3381822 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3393477

SOPA Was the biggest misstep for me, and was the breaking point for me to migrate all my domains elsewhere. I ended up at Namecheap because I liked the way they addressed the situation.

The user experience of buying domains through GoDaddy is very grating. They try to upsell and tack on services and features literally every step of the way. If all you want is a registrar, there are less annoying competitors at basically equal prices.

They don't all kill elephants for fun.

The fact that this question is being asked illustrates that the Godaddy hate in the tech community is not as strong as some would think (hope?)

As the person who asked: I do in house database programming, so while I am aware of GoDaddy (they are the biggest registrar, no?), I wouldn't know what to expect differently from one registrar over another, as I don't use them. I registered a domain for my Mum's business over ten years ago, but haven't used a registrar since.

GoDaddy actively pushed terrible SOPA legislation http://godaddyboycott.org/

Their past ad campaigns have been very trashy and sexist as well.

Their pricing is higher than other registrars, unless you play their discount/coupon games.

I transferred a domain from Godaddy to Namecheap last week. 33% cheaper and don't charge extra to keep my home address private.

My experience may have differed from yours.

In my experience a few years ago the process of transferring away from GoDaddy took as long and was as complicated as it possibly could be by law. Like absolute limit. If they were able to send me harassing emails before the transfer was completed, they did. Link bating with anti-agreements. I stuck it out for months jumping through every hoop they raised because I wanted to transfer away that badly. Maybe things have improved.

I hate GoDaddy.

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